This fabulous answer suggests there’s no way to run multiple versions of Google Chrome on one machine.

Every now and then you’ll get a website user stuck on an old version of Chrome (no idea how, but it happens — maybe they installed the standalone version?) with an issue, and you need to be able to verify it. Bit difficult to do that without their browser version around.

Does anyone know if there’s actually a way to do this? I.e.

Obtain an installer for an older version of Google Chrome (Google seems to keep very quiet about versions, which is great for users, less great for developers trying to support old versions)

Yeah, I’ve seen that site, looks good. Their “your browser is not supported” error page isn’t very helpful though, it just says “try another browser”. It doesn’t tell you which browsers they actually support.
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Paul D. WaiteSep 24 '10 at 12:13

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This service is great on Windows, useless on other OSes. And they let you set up and account and download the whole VM before telling you this.
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Steve ClaySep 9 '12 at 17:30

Personally I would not go back further than 5 years with compatibility (other than IE for government networks) unless you have a specific requirement (I split Chrome & Opera across years as I decided there were just to many releases). However, if you find that someone has a specific issue with a site using a specific version of the browser it becomes very easy to install additional virtual machines to run additional browser versions.

A Good Commercial Alternative

Another great product I recently came accross is Stylizer which is a CSS editor that installs multiple versions of browsers for testing purposes, however this is a commercial paid for product but is very good and worth the small fee they require to run it.

I think Stack Overflow limits newer uses from posting links, to help avoid spam. Once you get some reputation points you’ll be able to post links freely; I’ve edited your answer to include the links in the meantime. Great answer!
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Paul D. WaiteMay 19 '11 at 17:10

the first line is generic batch command, the second line will update registry with the content of chrome2.reg file, the third lines starts Chrome pointing to passed directory, the 4th line is commented and will not be run.

Notice short name format passed as -user-data-dir parameter (the full path is at the 4th line), the problem is that Chrome using this parameter has a problem with diacritics (Czech characters)

Do 7. again for Chrome 3, update paths and reg file name in bat file for Chrome 3

Try running both bat files, seems to be working, both versions of Chrome are running simultaneously.

Updating:
Running "About" dialog displays correct version, but an error while checking for new one. To correct that do (I'll explain form Chrome2 folder):
1. rename Chrome2 to Chrome
2. Go to Chrome/Application folder
3. run chrome2.reg file
4. run chrome.exe
(works the same for Chrome3)
now the version checking works. There has been no new version of Chrome since I've find this whole solution up. But I assume that update will be downloaded to this folder so all you need to do is to update reg file after update and rename Chrome folder back to Chrome2. I'll update this post after successful Chrome update.

Extract the installer (=without installing), using 7-Zip for example. After extracting, a chrome.7z archive is
created. Also extract this file, and descend the created Chrome-bin
directory. Now, you see chrome.exe and a dir like 18.0.1025.45.
Move chrome.exe to 18.0.1025.45, then move this directory to
C:\Chrome. The remaining files in Chrome-bin can safely be
deleted.

"C:\Chrome\18.0.1024.45\chrome.exe" • This is the
launcher * --user-data-dir="..\User Data\18" • User profile, relative to the location of chrome.exe. You could also have
used --user-data-dir="C:\Chrome\User Data\18" for the same effect.
Set your preferences for the lowest Chrome version, and duplicate the User profile for each Chrome version. Older Chrome versions
refuse to use User profiles from new versions. *
--chrome-version=18.0.1025.45 • Location of binaries:

The location (eg 18.0.1025.45) must be the name of the directory:

Must start and end with a number. A dot may appear in between.

The numbers do not necessarily have to match the real version number (though it's convenient to use real version numbers...).

Regarding configuration: All preferences can be set at
chrome://settings/. I usually change the home page and "Under the
hood" settings.

(the old version of this answer referred to Old Apps for old Chrome versions, but they do not offer direct download links any more through the UI. The files do still exist, I've created a shell script (bash) to ease the creation of a local repository of Chrome versions - see https://gist.github.com/Rob--W/8577499)

VB Script which automates install, config & launch

I've created a VB script which installs and configures Chrome (tested in XP and Win 7). Launch the script, and a file dialog appears (or: Drag & drop the chrome installer on the VBS). Select the destination of the Chrome installer, and the script automatically unpacks the files and duplicates the profile from a pre-configured base directory.

By default:

The Chrome binaries are placed in subfolders of C:\Chrome\.

The User profiles are created in C:\Chrome\User Data\.

The user profiles will be duplicated from the directory as specified in the sFolderChromeUserDataDefault variable, which is C:\Chrome\User Data\2\ by default.
After the first Chrome installation, set your preferences (Home page, bookmarks, ..). Then modify the variable (see 3.) in the source code. After that, installing and configuring Chrome is as easy as pie.

The only dependency is 7-zip, expected to be located at C:\Program Files\7-zip\7z.exe.

Frankly this should the be accepted solution!
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DotNetWiseJul 4 '13 at 20:26

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This doesn't work anymore. Old Apps link says - "Google Chrome is no longer available to download on OldApps"
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Anmol SarafJan 23 '14 at 3:14

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@AnmolSaraf See updated answer. My original answer was updated to use File Hippo, but Old Apps does still host old versions (take a look at the new paragraph in my answer).
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Rob WJan 23 '14 at 12:06

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@Tom Look in the linked Github gist for known-good paths to offline installers. Most recently used to get Chrome 33.
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Rob WFeb 26 '14 at 20:56

2

@JayBlanchard Use the Github gist at gist.github.com/Rob--W/8577499 to get old versions from Old Apps. If you need a version not listed at Old Apps, just request a specific version via mail. I've got direct download URLs for almost every Chrome release since v23 (up to the latest beta, v36 at the moment).
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Rob WApr 28 '14 at 22:03

I think I might have figured this out on Windows. You can run different versions of Chrome at the same time!

Do the following:

Copy over the version number directory into the usual c:\users\yourUser\appdata\local\google\chrome\application directory (I am assuming you had a backup of the older chrome version directory before the update occurred)

Copy over the chrome.exe from the older version as a new name such as chrome_custom.exe

Run chrome as chrome_custom.exe --chrome-version=olderVersion --user-data-dir=newDir

That's it! I use this method to run automated test on Chrome with Selenium, until selenium catches up and works well with the latest Chrome.

Though this seems to be an old question with many answers I'm posting another one, because it provides information about another approaches (looking more convenient than already mentioned), and the question itself remains actual.

from time to time, Chrome changes format of its profile, and as long as
2 versions installed by this method share the same directory with
profiles, this may produce a problem if it's happened to test 2 versions
with incompatible profile formats;

Second method is a preferred one, which I'm currently using. It relies on portable versions of Chrome, which become available for every stable release at the portableapps.com.

The only requirement of this method is that existing Chrome version should not run during installation of a next version. Of course, each version must be installed in a separate directory. This way, after installation, you can run Chromes of different versions in parallel. Of course, there is a drawback in this method as well:

profiles in all versions live separately, so if you need to setup a profile in a specific way, you should do it twice or more times, according to the number of different Chrome versions you have installed.

Select the folder corresponding to the OS you're interested in (I have Win x64, but had to use Win,because there was no x64 build corresponding to the version I was looking for).

If you select Win, you could be in for a wait - as some of the pages have a lot of entries. Once the page loads, scroll to the folder containing the revision number you identified in an earlier step. If you don't find one, choose the next one up. This is a bit of trial and error to be honest - I had to back up about 50 revisions until I found a version close to the one I was looking for

Drill into that folder and download (on the Win version) chrome-win32.zip. That's all you need.

Unzip that file and then run chrome.exe

This worked for me and I'm running the latest Chrome alongside version 25, without problems (some profile issues on the older version, but that's neither here nor there). Didn't need to do anything else.

Again, YMMV, but try this solution first since it requires the least amount of tomfoolery.